Simmerman, Stephen

Steve Simmerman grew up in northeast Tennessee, and has lived and worked in North Carolina for over ten years. From a young age Steve has been interested in archaeology, and how art has informed cultures from the translation of the Rosetta Stone to the age of digital apps. Simmerman worked professionally as a graphic designer and editor for five years, before deciding to pursue graduate studies, first in English then in graphic design. He has taught for over twenty years at several schools in the southeast region.

Among the artists Simmerman counts as inspirations are Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Norman Rockwell, and Jacob Lawrence. He admires the work of Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns and how they parlayed elements of commercial art into their paintings and sculpture. He’s also a huge fan of early magazine illustrators like N.C. Wyeth and Will Bradley, as well as poster designer Lucien Bernhard.

Simmerman’s work is primarily mixed media: acrylic, watercolor, oil pastel, or ink often layered with “found” type. Much of his creative pursuits addresses the word play of advertising and its power of persuasion, and he attempts to capture a collusion of nostalgia and mysteries of the passage of time. Along with completing a graphic novel in 2016, Simmerman has illustrated two children’s books and his work has been juried into numerous regional and national exhibitions.